Civil law - a set of legal dogmas that secures and combines all the provisions governing social and social relations.
Civil law norms are generally established and legislatively fixed norms of behavior that apply to everyone entering into civil legal relations.
The rules governing civil law relations are subject to unconditional protection of the state, because it is precisely it that is considered the guarantor of legitimacy and security in the field of civil rights.
Types of civil law norms and their interpretation
The norms in the civil field are divided into types that reveal interdependence on the level of obligation of the parties involved in legal relations, and the rules of their behavior:
- Dispositive view. It includes norms that can be changed by mutual decision of the process participants. This view reflects the perfect balance of all interests involved in legal relations. Dispositive rules contain tried and tested solutions. Most of the norms in the civil field relate to this particular type.
- Imperative look. The rules relating to it, no one has the right to change at their discretion.
For the unmistakable use of a particular legislative unit, it must be correctly interpreted, that is, its purpose, essence and meaning should be understood. Interpretations, depending on the subject, are divided into several types:
- Authentic interpretation of civil law. It suggests that clarification should come from the body that adopted the legislative act.
- Legal interpretation. The essence of the legislative unit is interpreted by the body that has the legal right to do so.
- Judicial interpretation of civil law. Civil law explains that this type of interpretation occurs when a court decision is made and is considered important only for the parties to the trial.
- Scientific or doctrinal. Interpretation of the norm occurs through comments and explanations to legislative acts, codes and other specialized literature or at specialized symposia and conferences. The doctoral (scientific) type of interpretation does not possess indispensable power, but it affects the comprehension of the essence of a normative act.
Considering the types of civil law and their interpretation in their dependence on the volume, we can distinguish the following types:
- literal interpretation (used if the essence of the legislative norm is considered appropriate to the text);
- restrictive (works when the essence of civil law is somewhat narrower than the essence of the literal text);
- the interpretation is broad (inversely restrictive, but does not work if you need to take into account a possible exception to the generally accepted rule).
Specialized Techniques
Law theorists in the section dealing with the interpretation of legal norms have identified special, special techniques, methods and methods of understanding the essence of any rule of law, which are called methods of interpretation of its normative unit.
Interpretation or interpretation is an activity in the intellectual field that allows you to establish the exact meaning and essence of a legal unit or indicate the features of the will expressed by the legislator.
From the foregoing, summing up, it becomes clear that the interpretation of civil law norms is a complex of certain techniques that makes it possible to understand a legal norm in the field of civil law.
Several methods are highlighted.
In the legal literature there are several ways of interpreting legislative acts. They are based on specialized sections of knowledge and are used to study the subject and content of the law with the sole intention of putting it into practice.
The methods of interpretation of civil law norms are divided into five categories: logical, grammatical, special legal, systematic, historical.
Historical interpretation
The concept and types of interpretation of civil law norms are inconceivable without an assessment of historical realities during the creation of legislative acts. Therefore, the method involves a comparative analysis of historical and living conditions during the adoption of legislative norms with its regulatory and legislative essence. Thus, the interpreter can trace possible links and clarify the continuity of the civil unit with other documents adopted in the previous historical time.
The way interpreters are used quite rarely. Usually in those episodes when there is a need to trace a change in the development of the studied norm in the field of civil relations.
Systematic interpretation
This method is intended to emphasize the features that are inherent in any norm in the branch of civil law relations in a single situation. The systematization method is based on the structure of scientific legal knowledge and the ability to find the connecting links between them and, in addition, on the study of determining the place, role and essence of the norm under study in the structure of civil law norms.
He uses a systematic approach to analyze legislation, individual chapters or articles, and the legal act as a whole. Particular attention is paid to the study of the content of the document, by comparing it with the earlier adopted ones and clarifying its role in the structure of legislative norms, as well as clarifying the characteristics of many-sided relations with other documents.
The application and interpretation of civil law in a systematic way is a clear understanding of the place, role and position of a specific legislative norm in the field of civil law, and its structural relations with related civil law branches.
They resort to this method for studying normative documents and evaluative concepts, which make it possible to find criteria for revealing the essence of phenomena and concepts.
Special legal interpretation method
Its basis is specific knowledge of the legal cycle. This method reveals the spirit of the legislative norm, establishes its content, subject and meaning. In this method of interpretation, significant emphasis is placed on knowledge and the ability to determine various types of legal rights and schemes of their work, ownership of legal functions, facts and obligations.
Most often, the interpretation of civil law norms in this way allows you to thoroughly explain the contents of the legislative document in full, which makes it possible to apply it most accurately. Law theorists consider a special legal interpretation, coupled with a grammatical and logical ideal form of reading the law.
Logical interpretation
This method works on the basis of formal logic. That is, the law is considered for reasons of evidence, analogy, disjunction, deduction and conjunction. Consequently, the interpreter, acting from the position of formal logic, will use mental activity in order to reveal the rule of law. As a result of the independent use of the rules, conditions, logical thinking methods due to the ambiguity of the words chosen by the legislator, the meaning of the document may not correspond to the literal meaning of the law.
Interpretation by the method of formal logic is applied when other ways of interpreting civil law norms do not allow the essence, subject and content of the legislative document to be fully demonstrated. Along with this, given that the acts studied consist of words or phrases, researchers of the theory of rights believe that the method based on formal logic is not applicable to valuation standards in the context of civil law relationships.
Grammatical interpretation method
This method is based on phraseology, grammar, vocabulary and other sciences of the philological direction. The essence of this method is a meticulous study of the body of the article or the whole law with the aim of analyzing the text itself, that is, paragraphs, individual words, sentences and phrases. It is this method that clarifies the features of gender, case, the number of nouns, adjectives; determines the time, number, type and face of verbs, the linguistic meaning of the used prepositions, conjunctions, introductory words, punctuation marks, etc. This is how the letter of the law is analyzed.
In other words, the above interpretation of civil law means:
- the study of the essence or significance of the terms used by the legislator, in relation to the features of use (special or general);
- understanding the meaning of a single sentence or a complete thought (paragraph or logical group of sentences).
Grammatical interpretation is used in the interpretation of words that have several meanings and normative explanations.
Civil Law Interpretation Examples
The interpretation of the rule of law using the method of parsing can be considered on the example of article 30, paragraph 1 of the Civil Code. As follows from this article, a person who, due to the abuse of smoking, drugs or alcohol or commitment to gambling, plunges his family into a difficult financial situation, has good reason to receive a limitation of working capacity (or legal capacity) in court. The legislator, when indicating misconduct, used commas and the “or” union, and this is a direct indication that even one of the above cases of abuse will suffice to apply the article.